11 March 2015

The first chapter from "The State and
Revolution" is attached, and downloadable from the link below. Lenin
wrote the book between the February 1917 bourgeois-democratic revolution
in Russia, and the October 1917 proletarian revolution.

The October Revolution dramatically interrupted his writing, leaving the
work unfinished.

SACP First Deputy General Secretary Jeremy Cronin has remarked that
South Africa is in some ways stuck “between February and October”, meaning to
compare our SA situation during the 20 years since 1994 with the eight months
in 1917 between the two Russian revolutions.

The urgency of Lenin’s revolutionary purpose is apparent from the first
paragraph, as is the priority he gives to the understanding of The State as a
product of, and integral to, the exploitative class-divided social system that
the Bolsheviks were determined to overthrow, and therefore a matter of the
highest revolutionary priority.

Hence the first words are a definition and a challenge to those who
would think otherwise: “The State: a Product of the Irreconcilability
of Class Antagonisms”

In the first paragraph Lenin refers to the embracing of “Marxism” by the
respectable bourgeoisie, and their pleasure at the amenability of “the labour unions which are so splendidly
organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!”

The world war that was raging at the time was not merely an incidental
background to the Russian Revolutions of 1917. As with the lethal global
neo-liberalism of today, the warmongers had seduced the major part of the
social-democratic organisations that claimed to represent the working class.

The organised structures of the working class had turned against the
working class. If this had not happened, the First World War would have been
impossible. The crux of the matter was the question, then as now, of The State.

Lenin is unequivocal:

“The state is a product and a
manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises
where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled.
And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms
are irreconcilable.”

Lenin proceeds to write that the overthrow of the bourgeois state
has to be direct and forcible, whereas the withering-away of the proletarian
state can only be the indirect consequence of the progressive disappearance of
class antagonism during the transitional period called socialism. "The
State and Revolution" goes to the very heart of the revolutionary theory
of class struggle, sharpens all contradictions, and draws clear lessons -
lessons that are still relevant today, and especially in South Africa.